Beaches in Kea

Kea’s coast splits cleanly into two kinds of beach, and sorting them by access rather than by looks is the useful way to plan. That distinction does more work here than any ranking would.

The paved-road bays, near the port and along the north coast. Otzias is the island’s longest beach, a curve of roughly 700 metres that the municipality describes as partly organised, with salt cedars for shade and tavernas behind the sand. Gialiskari is the small, busy one nearby, shaded by salt cedars and eucalyptus. Koundouros, about 16 km south of Ioulida, is the most developed of them, an organised sandy beach with sunbeds that doubles as an anchorage. And Pisses on the west coast is fully organised, with sunbeds, shade trees and places to eat close by. These are the easy days.

The ones you earn, though less dramatically than the maps suggest. Spathi is reached by turning off the asphalt and crossing a stretch of the interior; Sykamia by a short unpaved run at the end. Both have trees for shade. Spathi has a taverna-beach bar; at Sykamia you bring your own supplies.

And the genuinely remote one. The beach below Karthea, the ancient city-state on the southeastern coast, is on foot or by boat only. There is no road to it, which is exactly why it is worth the walk if you were going to Karthea anyway.

Shade is the thing worth noticing. Salt cedars behind the sand at Otzias and Gialiskari, shade trees at Pisses, trees at Spathi and Sykamia. On a Cycladic island that is unusual, and it changes what a middle-of-the-day beach visit costs you.

Why the access split matters more than usual here. Kea is an hour from Athens, which means a lot of visitors arrive with a car off the Lavrio ferry. If you have one, the whole coast is available. If you do not, the paved-road bays near the port are your list, and it is a perfectly good one. Which islands need a car covers the general question.

Reading the water. This is the Cyclades, so the summer meltemi is the factor, and an island with bays on several coasts usually has a sheltered one. Read the sea when you arrive rather than a description written months earlier. What the sea is like covers the mechanism.

The other thing in the water here. Kea has a wreck coast, and that is a matter for qualified divers with the right permissions rather than for a travel page. This page names no site, no depth and no operator, and describes nothing as accessible to any diver.

Our Kea guide has the practicalities and things to do covers the footpath network, the Lion and Karthea.